Administration is optimistic about dismantling al-Qaida

Officials still concerned about attacks already set in motion

Washington Post

Published
5:30 am CST, Sunday, March 16, 2003

WASHINGTON -- The United States is within reach of dismantling the leadership of the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Bush administration officials and U.S. intelligence experts said.

CIA and FBI officials are cautious in public not to overstate their optimism about breaking up al-Qaida and capturing Osama bin Laden, the organization's leader. But people who receive regular briefings on U.S. counterterrorism operations said the arrest and subsequent cooperation under interrogation of al-Qaida lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed this month have given them concrete reasons to come to this conclusion.

"I believe the tide has turned in terms of al-Qaida," said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House intelligence committee and a former CIA case officer. "We're at the top of the hill."

Goss's sentiment was echoed by a dozen other intelligence experts and law enforcement officials with regular access to information about U.S. counterterrorism operations. "For the first time," Goss said, "they have more to fear from us than we have to fear from them."

Officials cautioned that there was no certainty they could disrupt attacks already set in motion by al-Qaida or other affiliated groups, and they said they were still concerned about possible bombings and attacks on a smaller scale than those mounted against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said last week that he believes suicide attacks in this country may be inevitable.

But officials said the reasons for their optimism about al-Qaida are threefold.

Mohammed's capture in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi on March 1, they said, cut off the organization's key operational leader from followers poised to execute attacks. The cache of computer and paper files found in the house where Mohammed was living has turned out to be "a mother lode" of information, said one intelligence official. It has provided "hundreds of leads" about the organization's financial pipelines, funders, followers, movement of operatives and targets, another official said.

Also, Mohammed began providing information to his CIA captors soon after his arrest, officials said. Some of the information is unverifiable, said one U.S. government official, but other information is "things we didn't know and are very glad we know now." Mohammed also is providing translations of coded letters found among his belongings, U.S. sources said.

Although the precise nature of the information, including any planned attacks, could not be learned, one official said the information already has allowed U.S. law enforcement officials to improve security at certain targets Mohammed identified. It has yet to lead to any further detentions of suspected terrorists, the official said.

Because the CIA and FBI are much more familiar than they were a year ago with the organization and individuals involved in al-Qaida, they are more able to put the new leads to use. Also, with a handful of other high-ranking al-Qaida members imprisoned and undergoing CIA interrogation, the information "can be bounced off five other senior guys now anxious to tell us what they know," said one knowledgeable intelligence expert.

Because of these factors, the information "will lead to geometric progress," Goss said.

Another intelligence expert said of the CIA and FBI: "They believe they are on a roll and can get this group of people whom we know were involved in 9/11. We've got them nailed, and we're close to dismantling them."

Mohammed's capture also generated new leads about bin Laden's possible whereabouts and sent Pakistani forces as well as combined units of CIA paramilitary and U.S. covert military Special Operations teams to Pakistan's remote western border a week and a half ago, where a stepped up search is under way.